Life was so much simpler when it was just the two of us. We’d explore such avenues of thought together, you and I. Walking arm in arm through the boulevards of well-established fact before ducking down a muddy alley and romping in the puddles of the arcane. I came to trust you, to lean on you, to depend on you. And you never let me down. Whatever I needed, you could always lay your hands on it. You gave me everything.

(This is a flash story – a story written in 15 minutes on a train to Wales)

Want to know how I ended up in Hell? It was Billy’s stag night and so far a total disaster. Because of Billy’s best friend Bobby, we were sitting at a raw food restaurant in London – a raw food restaurant that had run out of most vegetables. I had a plate of “spaghetti” in front of me. Spaghetti made from shaved zucchini. Cold spaghetti. Spaghetti covered in tomato sauce consisting entirely of squashed cold tomato. “Don’t worry” whispered Billy, somehow picking up on my abject misery. “Wait until the girls arrive”.

Are the American people obsolete? Salon argues that because of globalisation and technology there is now a increased separation between capital and labour. The activities that generate wealth have both been outsourced to cheaper shores, and become more efficient because of technology. As a consequence the social contract in Western society between rich and poor – the rich provide the capital while the poor provide the labour – is breaking down. The rich still have capital, but they can now move the production of goods to the East, creating a shortage of jobs in the West.